


Quantum Singularity

by Sarek and Amanda Archive Maintainer (Selek)



Category: Quantum Leap, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: General Kapact, Kapact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 10:06:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selek/pseuds/Sarek%20and%20Amanda%20Archive%20Maintainer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crossover story between AOS and Quantum Leap, it involves Sarek and Amanda.</p><p>Written by Kapact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quantum Singularity

QUANTUM SINGULARITY

 

By Kapact

 

Rated G

Quantum Leap/AOS

Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to Paramount. Quantum Leap belongs to Universal. Neither one has any idea I'm writing this, nor should they care :)  
  
  
10:04 pm  
October 5th, 2015  
Stallion's Gate, New Mexico:  
  
  
"Admiral, we've got problems."  
  
Admiral Albert Calavicci rarely heard Ziggy's voice outside of the operation areas of the Project Quantum Leap complex. And for Ziggy to admit to 'problems' was not just rare. It was creepy. These thoughts rushed through his head as he woke up and started to move. Military training had long ago taught his body to rise and start dealing with things even as the brain was struggling to accept a new day. "What did you say, sweetie?"  
  
"I am not a sweetie, Admiral. I am the most sophisticated computer ever devised. And I said 'Admiral, we've got problems'."  
  
"Right, honey." Al didn't care if she was a computer. She had a voice straight out of 1-900-. "Wait a second. What problems?" He had gotten as far as shorts and a khaki shirt when the brain started thinking beyond Ziggy's sexy voice.  
  
"There is someone in the waiting room."  
  
"That's not funny." Al muttered as he rushed through stark white corridors.  Hidden audio pick-ups and speakers along the way enabled him to continue the conversation. "There hasn't been anyone in the waiting room in five years."  He stopped by the cafeteria for a coffee. Ziggy would be wrinkling her cute computerized nose at that. But he needed caffeine. "Not since Sammy Jo tried to—"  
  
"I am aware of that, Admiral. But there is someone in the waiting room."  
  
There was something she wasn't saying. He knew that. "Is it Sam? Is it Sammy Jo?"  
  
"No, Admiral."  
  
She sounded... No, it couldn't be. Ziggy couldn't be scared. "Well who is it? What is it?" He was close to the waiting room now, coffee carrying him along and danish helping him to think. He turned the corner, and came to the white double doors of the waiting room. "Come on Ziggy! What's in there?"  But he couldn't wait. He keyed the security code and opened the doors. And dropped his coffee and danish.  
  
It looked... almost human. Two arms, two legs. Eyes. Mouth. All standard.  But pointed ears... a green complexion, and... upswept eyebrows. Not just slanted, but gracefully upswept. It wore bland robes, and a face so stern that Al felt like a wet-behind-the-ears cadet. He was aware that he'd dropped his coffee and danish, and he felt burning liquid splash on his legs as the creature stared at him with an expression that seemed straight out of hell. "Oh boy."  
  
Sam felt mercury shoot through his head and his veins, just like he did with every leap. He also felt sick to his stomach. He felt the ground drop out from under his feet, just as his stomach started to churn. Then he saw that he wasn't alone. He was standing with a group of people... but not quite humans. Faces that he knew but didn't know. Pointed ears. Gracefully upswept eyebrows. Calm, even as the planet seemed drop out from under them. "Oh, bo-." Spock. T'Pau. They were there, thank goodness, along with the elders.  The holders of the Katras. But where was Amanda? She was dropping away. Arms outstretched to Spock, flailing helplessly. Mind outstretched to him. To Sam, but not to Sam. To Sarek. But he couldn't touch her. All he could do was stand there with a blank look on his face as the hell around him swirled into nothingness, and he began to see details of a chamber of some kind solidify. It was as if the process of leaping, which was normally instantaneous, had been slowed to a crawl. He felt a powerful presence in his mind. Familiar, yet... alien.  
  
"You must return me," the alien said in a voice that made Al squirm.  
  
"Uhh, yeah," Al answered. "We're working on that." Then he tore his eyes from the alien face. "Ziggy, a little help, please!" No answer. "Ziggy!" Al looked back at the alien, exasperated. "Look, sir, uh, I'm not sure who you are, or why you're here, or what we're going to do, but..." his voice trailed off. What was it about the guy that made him feel wet behind the ears? "You want a cup of coffee?"  
  
"I do not require a stimulant. I require my wife. I require a return to where," he leveled a steely gaze at Al, "and when I belong."  
  
"Yeah." The same infuriating defense mechanism that had always kicked in when the heat was on showed up, in spades. Bad humor. "Well, we're aware of the problem, and we're working on it." And he backed out of the room like his life depended on it.  
  
"We're aware of the problem, Admiral, and believe me, we're working on it," Gushie said as he brushed soot from his white lab coat.  
  
"That's not funny, Gushie." Al wanted to push into the computer room, but funny-smelling smoke and Project Engineer Gushie's bad breath stopped him cold. "What happened?"  
  
"Ziggy was just finishing a diagnostic when a massive amount of electricity shot through the system. Then she was gone."  
  
"What? I was talking to her just—"  
  
"Yes, yes, we aren't sure quite how she engineered that."  
  
"Engineered? She did it on purpose?" Al started to lead Gushie into the cafeteria. He didn't feel right leaving whoever it was in the waiting room, and Sam hanging by a thread wherever he was, but he needed to get a handle on things before he could help anyone. He took a plain white coffee mug from a counter and moved to the industrial percolator. Finally he sat at a table, with Gushie still following along. "Now, how about you just start at the beginning?"  
  
"A bolt of lightning struck the auxiliary satellite dish."  
  
"I thought you said Ziggy engineered it."  
  
"I did. We're just not sure how she knew that the lightning would strike—"  
  
"So anyway…" Al said, prodding the engineer along.  
  
"The lightning. I mean, not even Ziggy can predict exactly when and where lightning will strike."  
  
"What happened next?"  
  
"Oh! Oh right. Well, one point twenty-one gigawatts of electricty were pumped into the system. That was when our guest appeared in the waiting room, and Ziggy seemed to have been..."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Here's where it gets interesting, actually."  
  
"What happened to Ziggy?"  
  
"Fried chicken. Burnt toast. Charcoal, really." Gushie brushed at his blackened lab coat again. "Soot, actually. Yes, soot. Ziggy is soot."  
  
"We need Ziggy to find Sam, Gushie. So how can you say you're working on it?"  
  
"Well, we're thinking about it," he blinked and half-smiled from beneath a shock of singed hair. "We're thinking about it really hard."  
  
There was an element of humor there, Al realized. But there was more. "Make sure you think as hard as you can, Gushie, 'cause Sam is out there somewhere, hanging by a thread, and we can't help him without answers."  
  
Sam wanted to ask Spock why he was there, but realized that he should know.  It was one thing to have a swiss-cheese memory as a result of quantum leaping. This time his memory and thoughts seemed to be scrambled. And the icy/fiery mercury was still in his brain, giving him a splitting headache.  He gradually materialized in a chamber of sorts. It reminded him vaguely of the Quantum Leap chamber, the last part of the Stallion's Gate complex that he'd ever seen, but his logic also reminded him that the mind sometimes sees exactly what it wishes to see. And his swiss-cheese memory and apparently scrambled-egg mind was also pretty good at playing tricks on him. Suddenly his surroundings materialized around him, and his stomach showed up several seconds later. He swayed briefly on his feet, and felt himself being hustled out of the transport chamber. There was trouble. Big trouble. _Sam!_ Al's voice, but not Al's voice. His voice, but not his voice. And all in his head. Sometimes 'Oh, boy' just didn't cover it.  
  
Sarek's fingers had a feathery touch to them, but still seemed to bore through his skull. _My mind to your mind._ _My thoughts to your thoughts. Our minds are merging. Our minds are one._ Al felt the intrusion, and knew immediately that it was distasteful, more so for Sarek than for him. He wanted to shout immediately for Sam. To find his face along one of the regular, perfectly constructed walls that were his intrepretation of Sarek's mind. But no. There were equations. Images. A man named Archer, who, Al realized with a start, could be Sam's older brother. But there was a barrier there, that became opaque. Off limits. Amanda. T'Pau. Skon. Solkar. So many living. So many gone. Katras saved and katras lost. Again, the barrier came up like a brick wall. Off limits. Finally, the sparklers appeared. Neurons and mesons that comprised Al's link to Sam, and subsequent link to Sarek, in their joined mind. They led him through twists and turns, drawing closer, in concentric circles, to an image of a planet being swallowed from the inside out. And there was Sam, reaching out to a woman... to Amanda, as the planet fell out from beneath them. He tried to call to him then, but couldn't. They all materialized, linked by neurons and mesons that reminded Al of Tinkerbell, in a chamber that looked alot like the imaging chamber. Now it was time. "Sam!"  
  
Sam heard/felt Al's voice in his mind again, and he allowed himself to be hustled out of the chamber as the ship... the *Enterprise* rocked underneath him. Thank God for Spock, getting them off of Vulcan. What happened? Then everything froze. Everything. He knew, somehow, that time hadn't stopped.  
Exactly. Whatever it was, he finally had a chance to talk to Al.  
  
Al knew that he wasn't, in fact, walking around in the transporter room of the starship _Enterprise_ in the twenty-third century. A starship _Enterprise_ that was dramatically different from what it should have been, even though he didn't quite understand how he knew that. No, it was all a medium for his mind to move and interact in. There was Sam, and Sarek looking at him and each other. There was also a crowd of people frozen in place, including an ancient Admiral Archer standing behind a control panel with a worried look on his face. Then there was a cat. A small calico cat, sitting on its haunches atop the transporter's control panel. It rubbed itself affectionately on Archer's frozen hands briefly, then looked expectantly at Al.  
  
"What?" Al asked, not really expecting an answer. "Who are you?"  
  
"I am the most sophisticated computer ever devised, Admiral."  
  
"That's funny. I always pictured you with longer legs, and a cute little—"  
  
"Ziggy?" Sam interrupted Al. "Can you please explain what we're doing here?  What I'm doing here? How I'm here?"  
  
"We're here to put our minds together, so to speak, Doctor Beckett. You're here to help save the ten thousand Vulcans who would have otherwise died, and spelled the end of the Vulcan race. And you are here thanks to," the cat rose and rubbed against Archer again, "this man."  
  
"Admiral Archer," Sarek said.  
  
"Exactly," Ziggy the cat answered. "As you might notice, Dr Beckett, you bear a striking resemblance to Admiral Archer. That's because he is a direct descendent of yours. Unfortunately, we needed a little more than your influence in order to save the ten thousand."  
  
"One point twenty-one gigawatts of electricity," Al muttered. "Has that got something to do with it?"  
  
"Yes it does," Ziggy answered. "I knew from weather records that a bolt of lightning would strike the complex-"  
  
"Records from the future..." Al muttered, disbelieving.  
  
"That's a long story, Admiral." The cat glanced quickly at Sarek, who arched an eyebrow but remained steadfastly silent. "I knew that a bolt of lightning would strike the complex at precisely 10:04 pm on October 5th, 2015. That would provide the one point twenty-one gigawatts of electricity necessary for me to channel through Doctor Beckett and into the _Enterprise_ computer."  
  
"Would you care to explain that?" Sam asked.  
  
"Admiral Archer had a great deal to do with the construction of this ship," she answered. "Doctor Richard Eugene Daystrom, who helped to create the computer systems for this ship, secretly incorporated some of Admiral Archer's brain engrams into the software of the _Enterprise_ _’s_ main computer. That provided a conduit for me to channel through you, Doctor, and into the _Enterprise_ computer."  
  
"What does that have to do with saving ten thousand Vulcans?" Sarek asked.  
  
"I needed the power of the _Enterprise_ _’s_ warp engines to send a microburst of antimatter into the singularity that was created inside of Vulcan, in order to create a quantum singularity."  
  
"And that is...?" Al asked.  
  
"A theoretical point—" Sarek began, speaking as if from a great distance.  
  
"Where all possible realities exist side by side," Ziggy continued.  
  
"Where everything is possible," Sam added. "Everything that can happen does."  
  
"Where Surak never lived," Sarek said.  
  
"And Vulcan conquered the Alpha Quadrant before extinguishing itself," Ziggy added.  
  
Al saw images on a wall-mounted monitor of Vulcan warships blasting through fleets of primitive ships, and felt real fear at the possibility.  
  
"Where there was no _NX_ program," Sam said. "No Earth Starfleet. No T'Pol. Where Broken Bow never happened. Where Earth was the Empire."  
  
More images on the monitor, this time of Earth ships doing the same thing.  Al was just as frightened at this.  
  
"You guys are starting to scare me," Al said. "What does this have to do with the ten thousand-?"  
  
"Vulcan wasn't supposed to die," Sarek answered. "In some realities, it didn't. But in this one, we couldn't allow them all to die."  
  
"So I used the evil done here to create the quantum singularity at the heart of Vulcan. To put right—" Ziggy began.  
  
"—what once went wrong," Sam continued. "She found a reality where some would live."  
  
Now the monitor showed a young Vulcan in a cave with a human woman. It was Sarek, but not Sarek. A different man, but unmistakably Sarek. They were there for the birth of a son. Al looked quickly to Sarek, then to the frozen form of Spock.  
  
"Ten thousand," Sarek said flatly. "Enough to start again."  
  
"Enough to start again," Ziggy echoed. "As bad as it is, it could have been far, far worse."  
  
"Okay, so ten thousand are saved," Sam said. "We split this reality. Patched it up. So why am I still here?"  
  
"Yeah," Al said. "Sam always leaps when his work is done. What's left to do?"  
  
"I'm not sure, Admiral. This is a new reality. There are no records." Ziggy seemed to shrink down as she tucked herself into a small, furry ball. Her ears twitched, as if something was coming in on the wind.

_"Dad?"_ The small, frightened voice of a young girl crackled, seemingly coming in through the ship's intercom. _"Daddy?"_  
  


"Sammy Jo?" Sam looked around, expecting to see her appear. When she didn't, he was forced his eyes closed on a tear.  
  
"Sam's daughter," Al said to Sarek. "She leaped out, trying to bring him back. We never heard from her again."  
  
Finally, she appeared on the transport platform, looking at Sam with wide, loving eyes. " _Daddy?"_ The voice was still crackling through the speakers, but it was unmistakably her. Twenty years old now, but still the fierce little girl destined to follow her Dad like an echo. A shadow. _"Daddy?_ _Thank goodness you're okay."_  
  
"Yeah, I'm fine, Sammy." Sam wanted to grab her, to dry his tears on her shoulder. "I'm fine." But he also knew it wasn't to be. "I'm just happy to see you, baby."  
  
"Sam lost his wife in time," Al explained to Sarek. "He never knew his daughter. Not in person. Not until now, that is."  
  
"We're still here because of her," Sam said. "Not what I'm supposed to do, but what she's supposed to do."  
  
"Yes, that's it," Ziggy said. "She was somehow caught in the transporter. So she could take somebody's place."  
  
 _"Yes,"_ Sammy said quietly. _"I love you, Daddy..."_ Sammy Jo was enveloped by swirls of light and sparkling matter. And slowly, as she looked into Sam's eyes, she vanished, to be replaced by a young human woman.  
  
Sarek's eyes softened, and Al knew suddenly that the Vulcan secretly kept fiery passions. The Vulcan stood and approached the young woman retrieved from non-existence. "My wife."


End file.
